that had fallen from the trees, and allowed my imagination to play in the habitual way. I reveled in the sight of pictures of commanding women, particularly if, like queens, they wore furs. I read everything related to my cherished ideas. “Rousseau’s Confessions,” which then fell into my hands, was a great discovery. I found a condition described that resembled mine in essentials. I was still more astonished at the similarity of my ideas to those I read of in the writings of Sacher-Masoch. I devoured them all with avidity, though the blood-curdling scenes often far outdid my imagination, and then excited my aversion. Later, in order to supply new food for my fancy, I began to write descriptions of erotic scenes to my taste, and to make drawings of situations which, up to this time, I had painted only in imagination. In this, reality was entirely an indifferent matter to me. In the presence of a woman I was devoid of every sensual feeling; at most, at the sight of a feminine foot, there would come a fleeting wish to be trod upon by it.
This indifference, however, was only in relation to pure sensuality. In late boyhood and early youth I was subject to an enthusiastic partiality for young girls of my acquaintance, with all the extravagances common to this youthful enthusiasm. But it never occurred to me to connect the world of my sensual thoughts with these pure ideals. I never had to overcome such a thought; one never came to me. This is the more remarkable, since to me my lustful fancies seemed very strange and unattainable in reality, but in no wise vile or obnoxious. This, too, was a kind of poetry with me; but it was divided into two worlds,—on the one hand was my heart, or, rather, my esthetically excited fancy; on the other, my sensually inflamed imagination. While my “elevated” feeling always had a certain young girl for its object, at other times I saw myself at the feet of a mature woman, who treated me as previously described. I never placed any lady of my acquaintance in this rôle. In dreams the two spheres of my erotic ideas occurred alternately, but never combined. Only the images of the sensual sphere induced pollutions.
In my nineteenth year I allowed myself, with outward reluctance, but with inward desire, to be taken by friends to visit prostitutes. But there I experienced nothing but repugnance and aversion, and left as soon as possible, without having felt the faintest trace of sensual excitement. Later, on my own initiative, I repeated the attempt, in order to convince myself as to whether I was impotent or not; for I was much troubled by my unexpected failure in the first instance. The result was always the same,—I felt no excitement at all, and had not the slightest erection. In the first place, it was not possible for me to regard a real woman as an object of sensual gratification; and, furthermore, I could not renounce the conditions and situations which were the principal things in sexualibus for me, and about which nothing could induce me to speak a word. Imissio penis—the act to be undertaken by me—seemed to me
